I've chosen to do my wiki on the foreign travel option. I have only been to one other country outside of the United States of America, that country being Jamaica. I have been to Jamaica on two separate occasions, one being in March of 2000 when I was 24, the other being my honeymoon in February of 2009. The first trip I was originally supposed to stay for five days but half of the group of friends we were with and I were having so much fun that we decided to stay for an additional three days. The second trip was only for five days. The overall purpose of both trips was for a vacation but they were two totally different types of vacations. The first trip I was with a group of friends and the purpose was drinking and partying as I was a kid. The second trip, on the other hand, was to actually enjoy Jamaica and spend time with my wife while making memories. On the first trip the first thing I found out about how Jamaican culture differed from American was when asked what type of beer they had and was offered only one, Red Stripe, even at an inclusive resort with guests from all over the world. Since it was all inclusive, I really only left the resort to go to clubs that were filled with other tourists, so I didn’t have too much interaction with their culture. The culture I did experience seems to indicate that there was lots of crime and criminal behavior, an impression which remained consistent with my second trip. Almost every person I came in contact with wanted to sell me something, which about half the time were drugs. It happened so often that it led to my wife asking whether they were legal or not. On my first trip I had to go to a local bank and the cab driver who drove made sure that he was with me the entire time because he said that the area was not safe and the bank had several guards in it. The rate of crime may be directly related to the wealth of the country, which seems to be very poor. It seemed that even the officers of the law were less than ethical. On my second trip, my wife and I were being driven around by a cab driver; a police officer pulled him over by shouting to him to pull over from the side of the road. He then issued him a fine for driving without a seat belt, which he paid in ten U.S. dollars which the officer put into his pocket. When I made a comment about the power the police had by getting moving cars to stop just by shouting at them, he said "This isn't America, we know better than to question our police." While walking around with my wife the locals who were trying to sell us drugs were trying to get us to go into their stores, which were actually shacks they lived in that also had items for sale, most of which they made, such as jewelry or wooden sculptures, or random items like tee shirts. It was sad to see how little these people had, and definitely made me want to buy from them as a way to help them. It was actually funny to go into the actual real store as most here were owned by people of Indian heritage that spoke in the same manner and accent as everyone else that lived there. I found out later that the British brought people from India over to do the slave labor in the 1800's in addition to Africans, so these were Indian immigrants once but now actually are native Jamaicans.This is a beautiful country, and though the poverty of some of the people broke my heart, I’d love to visit again. As for doing business there, I definitely would need to learn about the country’s culture and laws before doing so.
Another aspect of Jamaica that sticks out is their driving, and frankly, how bad it was. I remember seeing a billboard during my first trip that was bragging about how their auto deaths were down that year and the number was still something like 300. I think the cause of this is a few different reasons, starting with the road and the terrain of the country. Jamaica has a lot of mountains and hills, and the roads seem to be extremely curvy. You add to this drivers going at very high speeds while constantly passing one another, and this seems like a recipe for disaster. I also feel that the quality of cars plays a large part as well. I recall driving back from Margaritaville in Montego Bay late at night and the cab was flying down the road and me looking at the dash and not seeing anything because the dash board was not working. I don’t think I ever been in a cab during either of my trips which had seatbelts. This comes back to the point that this is a poor country and safety regulations are not a priority. The last and probably most important reason for the driving deaths is that there seems to be a lot of drinking and driving. I don’t mean drinking and then driving, I mean drinking while you drive. More than one cab driver was doing this during my two trips, including the one who was stopped by the police. Whether they didn’t notice or didn’t care, I’m not sure. I think that until all these above reasons are addressed the driving related deaths will continue.
Another aspect of Jamaica that sticks out is their driving, and frankly, how bad it was. I remember seeing a billboard during my first trip that was bragging about how their auto deaths were down that year and the number was still something like 300. I think the cause of this is a few different reasons, starting with the road and the terrain of the country. Jamaica has a lot of mountains and hills, and the roads seem to be extremely curvy. You add to this drivers going at very high speeds while constantly passing one another, and this seems like a recipe for disaster. I also feel that the quality of cars plays a large part as well. I recall driving back from Margaritaville in Montego Bay late at night and the cab was flying down the road and me looking at the dash and not seeing anything because the dash board was not working. I don’t think I ever been in a cab during either of my trips which had seatbelts. This comes back to the point that this is a poor country and safety regulations are not a priority. The last and probably most important reason for the driving deaths is that there seems to be a lot of drinking and driving. I don’t mean drinking and then driving, I mean drinking while you drive. More than one cab driver was doing this during my two trips, including the one who was stopped by the police. Whether they didn’t notice or didn’t care, I’m not sure. I think that until all these above reasons are addressed the driving related deaths will continue.